Dear friend! I received the clippings. Merci!

We recently had two escaped prisoners here. It was interesting to look at "living" people, not eaten up by emigration, so to speak. Typical cases: one — a Jew from Bessarabia, a man of experience, a Social Democrat or nearly so, his brother — a Bundist, etc. He talked himself out, but personally uninteresting because ordinary. The other — a peasant from Voronezh, a man of the soil, from an Old Believer family. Black-earth strength. It was extraordinarily interesting to look at and listen to him. He spent a year in German captivity (there are horrors there in general) in a camp of 27,000 Ukrainians. The Germans organize camps by nationality and do everything to cut them off from Russia; they sent clever lecturers from Galicia to the Ukrainians. The results?

Only 2,000, they say, were for "samostiynost" (independence in the sense of more autonomy than separation) after a month of agitators' efforts!! The rest, they say, fell into fury at the thought of separating from Russia and going over to the Germans or Austrians.

A significant fact! One cannot disbelieve it. 27,000 — a large number. A year — a long period. Conditions for Galician propaganda — extremely favorable. And yet proximity to the Great Russians prevailed! Of course, this in no way follows that the freedom of separation is incorrect.

On the contrary. But from this it follows that, perhaps, Fate will spare Russia from the "Austrian type" of development.

As for defense of the fatherland, our Voronezh man — like Troyanovsky and Plekhanov. He sympathizes with socialism, but "if the German is pressing, how can one not defend oneself?". He doesn't understand. He is deeply offended (he and the Jew!!) by how mercilessly the Germans beat "our people." As for the tsar and god, all 27,000, they say, have completely finished with it; as for the big landlords too. Embittered and enlightened, they will return to Russia.

All the Voronezh man's yearning is — back, home, to the land, to the household. He wandered about doing work in German villages; he observed and learned.

They praise the French (in captivity) — good comrades. "The Germans too curse their kaiser." They hate the English: "arrogant; won't give you a crust of bread unless you wash the floor for them" (there it is, the rabble corrupted by imperialism!).

From another quarter: what a magnificent uproar the referendum has raised, especially its motivation! Delightful! If you had seen the articles by Grimm and Co. in the *Berner Tagwacht* and in the provincial Social Democratic press! Wailing, groaning! We hit these scoundrels not between the eyes but right in the eye. I pushed Radek with all my might (he's still here and I'm with him — didn't expect that? — arch-friendship, as always against the "center," when there's no ground for Radek's wavering, his games about "rights" and so on) to write a brochure: we walked about Zurich for hours and I kept "egging him on." He sat down and wrote it. Our "leftists," frightened by Nobs and Platten (these heroes were frightened by Grimm, who was frightened by Greulich and Co.!!), listened to it and rejected it (!!): don't print it, otherwise they'll expel us from the party (!!). We'll print it separately.

The moment is such that interest is heightened, when all internationalists not in words should help Swiss workers and the left. And we will help!

One more thing from another quarter. I re-read Engels' *Zur Wohnungsfrage* with the preface of 1887.440 You know? Delightful! I am still "in love" with Marx and Engels, and I cannot calmly tolerate any abuse of them. No, these are — true people! One must learn from them. We must not depart from this ground. Social-chauvinists and Kautskyists have departed from this ground. (By the way: have you seen the resolution by Loriot-Rappoport, Saumoneau?441 Also three-quarters Kautskyist. I want to write something for the French, to tear it apart and all this pacifism. I'll ask Grigory whether he'll publish it. He didn't answer about my reply to Suvairin!*) Well, all manner of good wishes — I've rattled on from the rooftops.

Your hand I shake! Your Lenin

* See "Open Letter to Boris Suvairin" (Works, 5th ed., vol. 30, pp. 261-272). Ed.